Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004 - 57

Everything Grows: Trucks keep getting longer and
longer. Today, 53' trailers are common, despite the
fact that they can't go everywhere and are harder
to maneuver. Still, switching from a 48 to a 53 can
sometimes mean saving the cost of an entire truck.

Wednesday. Realistically this means a Wednesday morning loadin. Is the show opening Thursday night? Do you have enough time
to unload set up, focus, tech, rehearse, and so on?
If not, you do have some options. You can reschedule the
opening. You can open on a bare stage. Or, assuming you have
all the money in the world, you can have the trucking company
charter a cargo jet for you and fly it there. This does occasionally happen, but the cost is usually prohibitive. Far simpler and
less costly is to have a team-driving arrangement. Also called
double-drivers, this additional-cost scenario assigns a second
driver to each truck so that when one driver needs to stop, the
other can get in the driver's seat and keep on trucking. Other than
stopping for fuel, they just keep moving, arriving in Boulder in
thirty hours - just in time for a Tuesday morning load-in.
But what if your next stop after Boulder is Bonn instead
of Broadway? Or what if the set for your opera is being borrowed from Bologna? Then, ocean freight or air freight comes
into play, along with a whole new set of legal and logistical
complications: customs documentation and clearance, ocean
and air equipment availability, schedules and priority, transit
times, container port hours and procedures, additional insurance. Again, your transportation company can make all of this
happen. Advance planning, though, is the key to practicability
and affordability.

THE LOAD: where is that box?

Spread out the load from the nose to the tail so that all of
the heavy gearis not concentrated in one area. This is a
safety issue, and the trucking company and drivers can
advise you on this.
restrictions (think low bridges) make a trucker's job interesting. Plus, many cities limit truck access to downtown during
certain hours. The drive times the trucking company provides
will take all of this into account. MapQuest will not.
So, at 45 miles per hour, your intrepid driver proceeds
westward for eleven hours, making a total of 495 miles. She
then sleeps, eats, showers and checks email for the required
ten hours before driving another 495 miles. That leaves her
360 miles, or eight hours, short of her goal. She will arrive
some 50 hours after she leaves.
Action

Hours

Miles

Drive
Rest
Drive
Rest
Drive
TOTAL

11
10
11
10
8
50

495
495
360
1350

This means if the truck is loaded and released from
Cleveland at 11:59pm on Sunday, it will arrive in Boulder ready
to load in at 1:00am (don't forget the time zone change!) on
56

S P R I N G

2 0 0 4

TD & T

Remember that great rule of accounting and truck-loading:
Last In, First Out. Make sure that the pieces you need first, like
the deck, flying scenery and electrics, are not stuck up in the
nose of the truck. There isn't much point in having to dig
through piles of props to reach the road boxes with the tools
in them. So plan your load, and load your plan.
On multi-truck shows the same principle applies, but
with a twist. The stuff you will need first in the next town are
likely to be the very last things that come out of the theatre. Although every show is different, you will generally want to sequence your load-ins beginning with any advance loads and
move through the stage decking, electrics, sound, scenery,
props, wardrobe, music and instruments, and merchandise -
in roughly that order.
Make a plan in advance, on paper, and be prepared to
refine it during the first few moves. Allow extra time during the
first moves for some trial and error, then adjust your diagram
so that you can easily remember what lives where on the truck.
Also keep in mind the need to consider both total weight and
weight distribution. Spread out the load from the nose to the
tail so that all of the heavy gear (like chain motors and cable
crates) is not concentrated in one area. This is a safety issue,
and the trucking company and drivers can advise you on this.
As part of your technical planning, getting a cost estimate
from the trucking company can be a great incentive to build
and pack efficiently. A little bit of planning can make the difference between one truck and two trucks, and that means
money. Although we often tend to think that more is better,
there is no law that states that a production must be as large as

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004